


Tribute

by Germinal



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 07:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10432332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: Gale POV.The absence of a smile, in this world, was hardly her fault. He knew whose fault it was.





	

He wasn’t used to seeing her smile, so he filed it away as a challenge. The absence of a smile, in this world, was hardly her fault. He knew whose fault it was.

Her lips were made for smiling, pink and plush, and when she made a joke, at his expense or not, the flash of her teeth and the curve of her mouth was something he treasured, filed it away and pictured it later. He wanted a world where Katniss could smile all she liked. 

Her intent in the woods, her intensity, the strung-tight muscles of her thin pale arms, her instinct, her arrow in flight. Her narrowed eyes on their prey, on the chase. She smiled when their kill was sufficient, she smiled in relief, she smiled at the thought of returning, for all of the pitiful shit that they had to return to. He never knew quite why she smiled, but she did. 

His predictable torment, his arms locked before him around the whipping-post, the lash scourging over and over across his naked back. His own stupidity. Lines of fire. The forces ranged against them. He endured, like she endured. She didn’t have to come for him. He knew she would.

The coating of snow, all the space he took up. The relief that he didn’t deserve. The desire. Her eyes on him, the concern when it should be companionship, should be them against the world. The need to make her proud.

The space she left when she was elsewhere, was gone. The train rattling on, taking her to places she didn’t belong. The empty places where she did belong, next to him, making the world make sense, shaping hope, shaping a future, blank and frightening. Her absence, his fear. 

The rightful shape of things, the possibility. The things that he could do. The path ahead that seemed so right, so obvious, so easy. The impossibility that she could disagree. The impossibility that he couldn’t meet a challenge head-on. The chance to shape the world anew, to make things right, to set them all free and redeemed and all scores settled. The things that he would do. To change the world, to see a blazing new tomorrow and, better than that, to see her smile.


End file.
